Alexa Stirling

A L E X A S T I R L I NG | V I

themselves or those around her weren’t her cup of tea. It was her genuine fascination and wonder for the outdoors that set Alexa apart from the masses. She enthusiastically embraced the natural adventure of hunting and fishing. Not only did Alexa relish the hunt but she also was a talented chef of the bounty brought by the hunt. And, her packed lunches featuring sardine sandwiches became a trademark that fishing companions talked about for years. Alexa, like Bob Jones, had an uncanny fascination for the way that mechanical things worked. She held a curious interest for steam-powered trains and the details of their operation. More than once she took her children to the trainyards and found herself lucky indeed to find an engineer or switchman who could explain the subtle details of operation to her satisfaction. She was also especially skilled working with her hands. Much of her spare time, even after the golf years, was spent working with wood and making furniture. Alexa was challenged by the task of building dressers, desks, tables, chairs and beds from local rough and milled lumber. She was intrigued and stimulated by discussions with skilled craftsmen who could fathom the “hows” and “whys” and “wherefores” of woodworking excellence. And she genuinely enjoyed relating with servants and staff of the Stirling household who might humorously struggle to explain in their own special dialect that with some woods it was necessary to “sarcinate it with creosoap.” Perhaps her crowning achievement was the design and completion of a dining room table for 12 comprised of 12” planks and girded up by 8” diameter white pine tree trunks for legs. Even though Alexa liked people, she was naturally quiet, modest and unassuming. It was not Alexa who boasted about her talents or accomplishments on or off the links. Her genuine modesty did not permit a shameless exposition of her sparkling golf record even later in life. She was content that perhaps only her immediate family were aware of one of the greatest golf legacies. But even her own children never knew the whole story from their mother’s lips. It was revealed only much later.

Like Jones, Alexa also was a sickly child whose parents moved to the fringe of the East Lake golf course in search of the “out of doors” experience which would strengthen their child. Alexa was four years older than “Little Bob Jones” and about the same age as Perry Adair who was the “heir apparent” to the East Lake golfing throne. Unlike Jones, who never took formal golf lessons, Alexa was the special pupil start to finish of Kiltie the Kingmaker – Stewart Maiden. Maiden was able to mold Alexa into the golfer he knew could compete at the highest levels. What Bob Jones picked up from an uncanny knack for imitation while watching Kiltie, Alexa and Perry learned from traditional repetition and practice at muscle memory. Maiden’s methods of teaching Alexa golf were reflective of his uncommon genius of the game. O.B. Keeler’s eyewitness account reveals much:

Stewart Maiden, never going out for tournaments, but a magnificently sound and orthodox player in the old days at East Lake, was accustomed to bang his full mashie shots up there from a crisp, clear impact, the club’s face taking the ball with its normal loft and the blade merely shearing the grass in front of the ball’s erstwhile position, instead of hacking out a divot six inches long. And as I recall it, the ball used to behave pretty well, on reaching the greens – which were not watered in the good old days at East Lake.

29